Entries in fashion
(22)

The June 26, 1957 Fairbanks Daily News-Miner ran an article titled, "Vitamins and Exercise Will Replace Girdles in 50 Years, Says Designer." An excerpt appears below, while the article in its entirety can be read at right.

The corset people are in a dither because a fashion designer says the woman of the future won't need a girdle.

Designer Adele Simpson predicted recently that 50 years hence, women will have such good figures they won't need to wear "unmentionables."

She said the improvement will come from vitamins and exercise.

Betty Vincent, educational director and fashion consultant for the Formfit Company, was quick to take issue.

Fifty years from now, she said, women still will come in assorted shapes and sizes.

Miss Vincent was willing to bet her girdle that even 500 years from now the female figure will vary little from today's models, "vitamins and exercise not withstanding."

"I think Mrs. Simpson is being unduly optimistic," she said. "Vitamins may be important to health, but they'll do little to life the bosom or control the average derriere."

Female shapes, she said, have changed but little over the past several thousand years, and to expect a radical improvement in the next half century is "wishful thinking."

Last month we looked at this photo in a book of 1960's advertisements. It's not immediately clear what women in space helmets have to do with refrigerators, but like we've discussed, positioning a product as "futuristic" means that as a consumer you're able to "buy tomorrow."

Own a piece of the future... with our widget.

Today we have an ad that looks to be from that same Frigidaire campaign. It appeared in the May 5, 1966 issue of Life magazine and touts the Gemini 19 refrigerator-freezer. I'm at a loss trying to think of products today that might co-opt language of the space age. When did the idea of living in space lose its luster?

The image above is from a 1965 Frigidaire print advertisement. The futuristic style reminds me of the New Christy Minstrels album cover we looked at a few years ago, though the faux-wood paneling on that fridge doesn't scream "space age" to me.

The ad was found in the book The Golden Age of Advertising - The 60s, cropped just as you see above, but I'm curious if the original ad had any interesting copy to justify the space age ladies pictured.

Wearing a dress of the year 1960, Miss Futurama, Betty Crain, presents Harvey D. Gibson, chairman of the board of the New York World's Fair, with the General Motors streamlined car of 1960 in these photos from 1940.

From Leo Casey, Director of Publicity for the World's Fair of 1940 in New York:

Indiana girls, employees of General Motors, stand by as "Miss Futurama" Betty Crain, of Kokomo, Indiana, presents Harvey D. Gibson, chairman of the Fair Board of Directors with a model of a 1960 streamlined automobile during the celebration of General Motors Day at the World's Fair of 1940 in New York.

Left to Right -- Evelyn Reason, of Anderson, A.J. Schamehorn, Director of the G.M. exhibit at the Fair, Miss Crain, Mr. Gibson, [unreadable] Edwards, also of Anderson, Evelyn Harger, of Muncie, Myrtle Short, of Indianapolis, and Jean Stines, of Anderson. The girls all wear dresses of glass, rubber, acetate and rayon, known as "Dresses of 1960."

This image of "Mama's Easter parade costume in 2000 A.D." appeared in the February 26, 1951 Walla Walla Union-Bulletin (Walla Walla, WA). "Chicago fashion experts" predicted that women would carry around their own food, fuel and telephones in mesh bags. The food and telephones seem rather prescient, but I'm not so sure about the "fuel" part of the equation.

FASHION FORECAST -- Mama's Easter parade costume in 2000 A.D. will look something like this, say Chicago fashion experts. They say women will tote their own food, fuel and telephones in mesh bags, such as are carried by model Marjorie Needham.

The March 25, 1893 Newark Daily Advocate (Newark, OH) ran predictions of what the world of 1993 would look like. Excerpts from each of the four journalists (George Alfred Townson, Kate Field, Nym Crinkle, and John Swinton) appear below. The entire article is embedded below, or you can read it here.

Substitute the word "blog" for "book" in the last prediction and it could have easily been written today.

Where will be our greatest city? In all probability Chicago. There will be wonderful cities in the west, none more beautiful and extensive than Salt Lake City; but unless all signs fail Chicago will take precedence.

So called temperance legislation is a temporary aberration of well meaning but narrow minded men and women with whom sentimentality supplants reason, and who actually thinks morals are an affair of legislation. One hundred years hence personal liberty will be more than a phrase. When it is a fact sumptuary laws will be as impossible as witch burning is now.

The encyclopedic man, who makes a show of knowing all things, will give way to the specialist, who makes an effort to know one thing and know it well.

They will have more leisure to think. The present rate of headlong material activity cannot be kept up for another hundred years.

While I am writing this the statesmen of the country are asking themselves if it is not time to make laws which shall restrict if they do not put a stop to immigration.

In 100 years Denver will be as big as New York and in the center of a vast population.

If the republic remains politically compact and doesn't fall apart at the Mississippi river, Canada will be either part of it or an independent sovereignty, and the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico will be the Riviera of the western continent.

I guess that there will be great political and social changes in our country before the year 1993, and that these changes will be advantageous to the community at large. I guess that before the next century shall end the functions and powers of our government will be greatly enlarged; that railroads, telegraphs and many other things now held as private spoil will be public property; that law, medicine and theology will be more reasonable than they now are; that the inventions and discoveries will be greater than we have ever yet had, and that the welfare of mankind will be higher than it is in this age of confusion.

Every person of fairly good education and of restless mind writes a book. As a rule, it is a superficial book, but it swells the bulk and it indicated the cerebral unrest that is trying to express itself. We have arrived at a condition in which more books are printed than the world can read. This is true not only of books that are not worth reading, but it is true of the books that are. All this I take to be the result of an intellectual affranchisement that is new, and of a dissemination of knowledge instead of concentration of culture. Everybody wants to say something. But it is slowly growing upon the world that everybody has not got something to say. Therefore one may even at this moment detect the causes which will produce reaction. In 100 years there will not be so many books printed, but there will be more said. That seems to me to be inevitable.

The February 23, 1968 Bridgeport Telegram ran this picture of the futuristic urban woman of the year 2000. Her futuristic body paint naturally deflects air pollutants and radioactivity! Happy Earth Day!

IS THIS WHAT LIES AHEAD? - A Los Angeles engineer thinks women living in an urban environment in 2000 will look like Vicki Dunlap, above. She wears body paint for insulation against the weather and air pollutants, including radioactivity. A computer necklace programs her day, governing the temperature of her oven, warning when her children will be home, and monitoring the guidance device of her car. Colored jewels are warning signals. Her hat is a receptor and transmitter for a two-way radio worn around the arms, with the earrings supplying energy for radio and computer. Think you can wait another 32 years?